


Day 9 - Who Watches the Doctor?

by Amemait



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: GFY, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-10
Updated: 2013-07-10
Packaged: 2017-12-18 08:01:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/877481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amemait/pseuds/Amemait
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I wrote this with a slight head injury.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Day 9 - Who Watches the Doctor?

If there was one thing that Theta could not understand, it was watching.

Sure, it was a time-honoured (HA!) tradition of Gallifrey. Watch, monitor, perhaps learn from the mistakes of others, but never - never! - interfere. Watch had been their (ahem) watchword for years.

It was one day, one day during the week he'd spent suspended from the Academy for doing something completely ridiculous and foolish and liable to get himself killed and above all else interfering, not simply watching and waiting to see what might happen (for they had all the time in the world to watch there; barring accidents or choices, a Time Lord was immortal, and could easily remain alive through the Matrix if they so chose - but actually acting.

It was one day that he came across a passage in a book from his family's somewhat eclectic library.

'QUISCUSTODIETIPSOSCUSTODES', in the proper Latin. A single line in semi-modernised Latin (spaces and capitalisation followed by smallcaps in the popular style, which almost hurt to wrap his young mind around as he translated it back to Gallifreyan, writing it on the reverse of a piece of paper to hang in his dorm, on the other side of the carefully copied out words, written the way they should have been) from a report from an Earth-based commission, and it sparked an entirely different line of thought in young Theta Sigma. He became obsessed with trying to figure out the answer to that question, for it had been written without any knowledge of the Time Lords, but it epitomised them so gracefully. And indeed, it was a question that remained to be answered, for the phrasing of the Latin was distinctly not that of a rhetorical question. It was a serious question, the wording complete and open to answers, indeed begging for a response.

It was a question that had been asked, in many different forms, over centuries. There were the satires of Juvenal that he found (original, signed scrolls, hidden in the depths of the family library, and Theta wondered who had brought them there, who in his family had been so adventurous as to actually go forth into time and space and purchase those writings). There were so many questions, but it was still one that he wanted answered most of all.

'Who watches the watchmen?' was the question.

And the answer, so obvious now that the Doctor looked back?

The answer was 'nobody, everybody, one lone old man who cannot now bring himself to comdemn.'


End file.
